No More Slip-and-Slide City?

Last year’s “once-in-30years” 69-cen­time­tre snow­fall iced us in, shut us down and made us a punch­line across the Great White North. Will city and ci­ti­zens do a bet­ter job if and when the cold stu¡ hits again?

more warn­ings and tick­ets were sent out last year to peo­ple who wouldn’t clear their side­walks. To avoid join­ing their ranks this year, shovel up by 10 a.m.

Snow tire sales were up 80–90%

at just one Kingsway tire shop last win­ter—with luck, that should mean slightly fewer thrills and spills next time the slush hits the fan.

15,000

tonnes of salt was dumped on Van­cou­ver streets last win­ter—474% more than av­er­age. Now, the city is more than dou­bling its stor­age ca­pac­ity for salt and brine.

A bud­geted $1.62 mil­lion

(plus $4.3 mil­lion for equip­ment and in­fra­struc­ture) will help keep 1,809 lane-kilo­me­tres of main roads mov­ing. Side streets are still on their own, though. While re­sent­ful driv­ers steamed on Twit­ter over freshly plowed, seem­ingly empty bike lanes, roughly

1,300 bike com­muters still crossed the Bur­rard Bridge ev­ery day, even in the snowy depths of Jan­uary.